Make Your Website - Multi-Lingual [Web Designers Toolbox]

Do you have a website with information that may be relevant to people who speak languages other than English? Have you noticed that recently, you've received a number of hits from non-english speaking domains? If this is the case, then you will want to check out my first installment of Web Designers Toolbox. Web Designers Toolbox will focus on tutorials that help average people do great things with their websites, for little or no money!

In my review of the Best Google tools that you've never used, I showed you how you could use Google to translate text. I'm going to show you a similar tool from AltaVista that you can add to your site to allow visitors to translate the text of the page that they are viewing (see a sample of this below).

To use this tool, head over to AltaVista and select the search box that you prefer (those are your two choices above), and click on the I want this one! button for whichever you choose. A window will open with the code to be placed on your page. Next, go back to your web page, and paste it where you would like it in the source code. Now that the code is placed on the page, upload the page and you are done!

The two available search translation tools perform different functions. The translation tool on the left, allows a user to translate the current page simply by clicking on a flag, while the translation tool on the right allows a user to translate typed or pasted text or URL's. Below, you will find a screenshot of what the text on this page would look like translated from English to Spanish.

English to Spanish Translation

I would suggest that if you plan on using this tool for all of your pages that you put it in the template that you are using to create pages for your site, that way you don't have to keep copying and pasting the code every time you want to use it. It will automatically be there.